1. Field of the Invention:
The invention relates to a mechanism for actuating the doors covering recessed headlights of a vehicle to open and closed positions.
2. Prior Art:
Mechanisms for operating the doors of recessed vehicle headlamps to open or close have been widely used in the past. Such mechanisms are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,324,742, Voorhees, June 20, 1943; 2,700,725, Morphew et al, Jan. 25, 1955; 3,070,687, Marchant, Dec. 25, 1962; and 3,601,594, Carbary, Aug. 24, 1971. The headlight doors shown in these patents have been, broadly, symmetrical about a vertical axis so that it has been possible to open and retract the doors into the headlight recess in a relatively straightforward manner.
However, in the present invention, the headlight door is not symmetrical about a vertical axis. It is desired, from a design standpoint, to provide the door in the form of a non-right angle parallelogram. This has been done for design effect. The headlights are recessed into vehicle panel structure which is angled rearwardly from the front of the vehicle towards the side of the vehicle or, otherwise stated, from an inboard point of the vehicle to an outboard point of the vehicle. This has been done so that when the front end of the vehicle is viewed from the front of the vehicle, the headlamp doors will give the optical illusion of being rectangular. Because of the slant of the panel structure in which the doors are mounted, if the openings were actually rectangular, they would appear to be non-right angle parallelograms when viewed from the front of the vehicle. This is considered to be visually objectionable.
However, as a consequence of this arrangement, the doors are not symmetrical about a vertical axis. This geometry results in making it impossible to retract the doors about an axis which is perpendicular to the side edges of the door and at the same time to fully retract the doors into the recesses. A portion of the doors would always project out of the recesses if the axes of retraction were at right angles to the edges of the doors. On the other hand, if a horizontal axis were chosen, the doors would move in a sideward direction with respect to the side edges of the opening into which they are mounted during the retracting process. This would cause interference of the side edges of the doors with the side edges of the openings as the doors are retracted. In order to solve this problem, in accordance with the present invention, the doors are retracted about a generally horizontal axis so that they will be entirely recessed into the headlamp recesses when they are retracted. But, during the retracting process, the doors are simultaneously moved sidewardly so that they will not interfere with the edges of the openings in which the headlamps are recessed. Structure to accomplish this purpose is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,893, Apr. 12, 1988. The structure disclosed therein is functionally adequate. However, the presently disclosed structure is less expensive to manufacture.